For an art dealer with just five years in the business and without a secure stable of artists, Vito Schnabel is building quite a showroom empire. The son of artist Julian Schnabel, the 21-year-old has just returned to New York from London, where he curated a show at the Scream Gallery. In an interview in his family’s residence, he discussed his plans to open three separate exhibition spaces in Manhattan during the next few months.

Mr. Schnabel will soon take command of a 4,300-square-foot space on West 23rd Street, lent by a friend of his, that will serve as his private showroom. In September, Mr. Schnabel and his father will open a gallery in the first floor of the elder Schnabel’s palatial pink West Village townhouse, dubbed Palazzo Chupi. And the budding dealer also plans to use a portion of the same building as a third private exhibition room.

“I want to find interesting spaces,” Mr. Schnabel said. “I want to cultivate a community. Create kind of a clubhouse atmosphere.”

Mr. Schnabel, even in his limited career experience, has already primed himself to do just that. In addition to the buzz of his family legacy and his own personal publicity — Mr. Schnabel is rumored to be dating former supermodel Elle Macpherson — Mr. Schnabel is crafting a serious curatorial résumé.

Having organized his first show at age 16, Mr. Schnabel opened his first temporary gallery space in 2004 at age 17. A bisected space on the corner of Broome and Hudson streets, on the lip of the Holland Tunnel, the gallery, referred to simply as “Vito Schnabel,” showed in its first exhibition, “Incubator,” the works of seven artists, including Luigi Ontani, Herbie Fletcher, and Mr. Schnabel’s sister, Lola.

It was Mr. Schnabel’s subsequent show, however, that proved prescient of his future predilections. Rather than stake his claim on a young, emerging artist, Mr. Schnabel chose to resurrect the work of painter Ron Gorchov, an artist who had been mostly off the map since the 1970s, when his abstract works had helped prime the art world’s canvas for the work of artists such as Mr. Schnabel’s father. “It has been thirty-two years since I first saw Ron Gorchov’s painting, and he and I have had a lifetime of parallel lives in which we fell away from each other without much contact,” Julian Schnabel wrote in a contribution to the catalog for Mr. Gorchov’s show. “I hadn’t thought about our meeting until not so long ago, when Ron recounted it to my son Vito.”

Indeed, it is the younger Mr. Schnabel’s preference for the floundering artists of his father’s generation, rather than the emerging ones of his own, that has already created a minor legacy for the young dealer. Though a presence on the art fair circuit, Mr. Schnabel has been more likely to find his latest projects on the fringes of his family album than at Art Basel.

“I’m not necessarily looking for young artists’ work,” he said, padding around the checkered floor of his residence in socks, a cigarette and his BlackBerry never out of arm’s reach. “People ask me, ‘Who’s the next new artist?’ Well, if it’s the first time I’ve seen someone’s work, then it’s new to me.”

In addition to Mr. Gorchov, whose show at Mr. Schnabel’s gallery not only generated enthusiastic reviews, but also led to a solo show for the artist at P.S.1, Mr. Schnabel has focused his energy on the work of other artists in the periphery of his father’s fame.

He chose, for example, the work of Rene Ricard — an artist who worked under Andy Warhol and is credited with helping launch the careers of both the elder Mr. Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat — as the focus of his most recent show at Scream, a gallery owned by another artistic legacy, Tyrone Wood, the son of Rolling Stones bassist Ron Wood. “He was this invisible force behind so many artists in the ’80s,” Mr. Schnabel said of Mr. Ricard. Mr. Schnabel felt that Mr. Ricard’s own work, which consists primarily of paintings overlaid with original text, hadn’t received its proper due in New York, where the artist is a fixture at the Chelsea Hotel but hasn’t enjoyed an exhibition since 2003. Mr. Schnabel plans to showcase Mr. Ricard’s work in the opening exhibition of his Chelsea space and, in an attempt to foster that “clubhouse” community, also plans to host Mr. Ricard’s poetry readings. (Mr. Ricard has published several volumes of poetry.) “There’s a lifetime behind his work,” Mr. Schnabel said. “He’s a grown-up.”

Mr. Schnabel has also focused his energies on mixed-media artist Vahakn Arslanian, whom he included in “Incubator,” and to whom he devoted a solo show at Scream in 2007. Mr. Arslanian, who was born deaf and was diagnosed with autism, first developed a relationship with the Schnabels as a child, when he visited Julian Schnabel’s studio. Mr. Schnabel put young Mr. Arslanian’s predilection for smashing glass to use by handing him a hammer and having him break clay pots for a painting, “The Sea,” he was working on at the time.

“This guy has never picked up an Artforum in his life,” Mr. Schnabel said with admiration for Mr. Arslanian’s detachment from the social sphere of the art world. “He has no idea what’s going on in the auctions. He’s completely dedicated to his work.”

Of course, Mr. Schnabel is not confining his interest to those with family ties. He is reluctant to curate a solo show of work by his sister, Lola, a recent Cooper Union graduate, considering the pairing to be too close for comfort. But though he has been scouting art shows for fresh talent, his interest in those with links to an earlier era seems fairly firmly entrenched. Asked to name others he has his eye on, Mr. Schnabel quickly mentioned McDermott & McGough, an artistic duo who, though currently enjoying a show at Cheim & Read gallery, hit the peak of their fame in the 1980s, when they were known for their self-immersion in the customs and dress of the Victorian era.

For now, though, he is in no rush to add artists to his roster. The walls of his room at Palazzo Chupi are lined with the work of Messrs. Ricard and Arslanian, and Mr. Schnabel seems quite at home there. The only other artwork in the room? An enormous Andy Warhol triptych of a photo of Julian Schnabel, taken by Julian’s first wife and Vito’s mother, and rendered in black, white, and pink. Affection for at least one artist, it seems, runs in the family.